ANCHORAGE — On a foggy Saturday morning in early January 1978, the body of a 16-year-old girl was found in a ditch off the Seward Highway. An autopsy would later determine she had been beaten, sexually assaulted, dragged behind a car and then tossed down an embankment. Her broken fingernails suggested she had tried to crawl back to the road before she died.

Later that night, police arrived at a party the girl’s mother was attending. They pulled her husband outside and spoke to him in hushed tones.